


steal my heart, I give it back to you

by AgentStannerShipper



Series: Star Trek Bingo 2020 [10]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M, Fluff, and data is just very sweet and cute, let me have nice things, lore is a bit of a bastard but he isnt evil here, no i dont explain why they look like that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25850596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentStannerShipper/pseuds/AgentStannerShipper
Summary: A pickpocket on the streets of London, Tasha didn't quite anticipate falling for a good-natured stable hand. Life is funny like that.
Relationships: Data/Tasha Yar
Series: Star Trek Bingo 2020 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875274
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16
Collections: Star Trek Bingo Summer 2020





	steal my heart, I give it back to you

**Author's Note:**

> For the bingo prompt "Regency." I just adore historical fiction. It's a lot of fun to write, and I like toying with the more classic writing style a bit. This seemed appropriate. 
> 
> Teen rating for a couple suggestive comments, just to be safe. My titles just seem to get increasingly cheesy and nonsensical, but what can you do?

The sky was nearly pitch, the night-animals chirping as the streets of London grew less bustling with the rising of the moon. Shopkeepers were closing up shop, travelers tucking themselves into inns, society people either journeying home from an evening affair or journeying out to some event that would last most of the night. London was never quiet by any means, but a certain weight descended upon it after nightfall, the kind that had decent people walking from streetlamp to streetlamp, wary of the shadows.

Tasha lived in the shadows.

She had been found, she was told, in a little bundle outside St. Martin-in-the-Fields in the Strand. She had been taken in, like many of the urchins off the street, by a spinster woman, Miss Yar, who had looked after many such children as Tasha. Miss Yar was not a woman the church would have approved of, nor was she a particularly maternal sort. She taught the children to wield knives, to catch rats when coin was scarce, to pick pockets and steal bread without anyone being the wiser. Tasha excelled at it all. She would never wear silks and ribbons, but it kept her fed, and it kept her out of the whorehouse like the other pretty street girls. Tasha was pretty too, she’d been told, but she kept her hair cropped shorter even than most boys, and in her tattered clothes and streaked with dirt and soot she could even be mistaken for one, albeit a boy with plush lips and big eyes. The sort that sailors might glance twice at and leer, but not worth the trouble if she fought back. And Tasha always fought back.

Tonight, however, was a calm one. The moon hung, a silver sliver of light, casting long shadows amongst the buildings as Tasha slipped through familiar alleyways, strolling the backstreets without rush. She stirred her fingers in her pocket, concealed inside the fabric of her coat, ears finely trained to hear the slight jingle of a few coins and a metal broach, lifted earlier from a woman with a shrill voice and an elaborate pink gown, who had been swatting and scolding her valet and hadn’t noticed Tasha’s hand as she’d brushed past. The broach was pretty, inset with jewels, and even if they were glass it would still fetch a good price when she pawned it off. But that was an affair for tomorrow morning.

She withdrew her hand, patting the front of her coat to feel the shape of the object secured against her chest. It was perhaps less intrinsically valuable than some coins or a broach, but in many ways it was the most significant thing she carried with her tonight.

Tasha’s destination was perhaps halfway between the city center and the more run-down part of town she hailed from. It was an easy stroll, and she smiled when she caught sight of the stables, the lamps bright, casting flickers that made the straw that spilled out onto the cobblestones shine like true gold. London was full of horse stables, some for personal use and others for sale or rent to travelers or to carriage drivers, but none were as dear to Tasha as this one.

A man leaned against the outside, one foot propped up idly on the wall behind him, his head tipped back towards the stars, chewing on a piece of straw. His lips curved around it when he caught sight of her, and he pushed off, leering at her in the dark. He was of an age with her, but not a height, standing a little taller, his shoulders broad from work. But he kept a modest distance even as she approached, not out of any sense of propriety, but because Tasha had laid him out flat on the ground more than once, twisting his hand viciously and threatening to cut it off if he laid it on her again. He had laughed, but he had learned.

He raised his hands now, then folded them pointedly behind his back, rocking back on his heels as if the gesture was casual, not calculated. “Miss Tasha,” he purred. “A pleasant surprise as always.”

“Is your brother in?”

He rolled his eyes, placing one hand theatrically over his heart. “Your cruelty is enough to make a man ache. Oh, to be scorned for a brother!” He shook his head, clicking his tongue. “What can he give you that I cannot?”

Tasha gave his performance no mind. “Lore, I’m not going to ask again.”

He huffed dramatically, and leaned back against the wall. “Data’s inside,” he told her. He kicked at the straw. “I mean it, you know. If it’s just his pretty face you’re after, we are identical. And believe me when I tell you, you could have fun with me than my twin couldn’t even conceive of.”

“I’m sure I could,” Tasha told him. “That’s why I like him better.” She grinned at Lore’s affronted sound, strolling past him into the stables. It smelled strongly of hay and horses, but Tasha had become used to those smells over the course of her visits. At any rate, she’d certainly smelled worse around the docks.

It was a small stable, not many stalls, and only half of them filled tonight. The horses nickered as she passed, tossing their heads lightly, and Tasha patted a bay briefly before continuing on. She found Data in the last stall, brushing down a black mare, his hair as sleek and shiny as her mane under the lamplight. He might have looked like Lore, but the difference in how the boys held themselves meant Tasha would never mistake one for the other.

She oughtn’t have called them boys, of course. They were as much men as Tasha was a woman, just past two and twenty, and Tasha could never be sure why it delighted her that she was older than them, if only by a year. So too was she delighted by the oddity of their appearances, the unusually pale skin and the bright yellow eyes. Lore had spun her a tale once, his smile sly and gleaming, about a priest who had seen them as children, only to swear that the devil had possessed the boys, and who had done everything in his power to exorcise the demons. “A shame it only worked on one of us,” Lore had teased.

But Tasha wasn’t inclined to believe in demons or evil spirits. The boys knew even less of their origins than Tasha knew of hers, although Data had said that the family who had taken them in spoke of traders from Spanish South America. Tasha had never met a Spaniard who looked quite like Data and Lore, but then, she hadn’t met many Spaniards at all. The eyes were quite possible a defect from birth, and they were odd, but they had never bothered Tasha as she knew they bothered others.

They shone now, as Data glanced up at her approach, a small smile quirking onto his lips. He was more reserved than his brother, the expression small and subtle rather than the large strokes of Lore, but Tasha trusted this pleasure was genuine more than she trusted Lore’s dramatics. She smiled too, resting her crossed arms atop the closed stall door. “Good evening, Data.”

“Good evening, Miss Tasha.” His voice was soft, sweet. The sort of tone that should have been accompanied by a blush, although Tasha had never known Data to do so. He set down the brush, stroking the mare’s side when she nosed at him, and then slipped out of the stall, Tasha backing away enough for the door to swing open. His shirtsleeves were – disappointingly – still fixed around his wrists. Tasha had seen them rolled up once, his forearms lightly muscled and absolutely delicious. The top button of his waistcoat hung undone, but only that. It offered such a picture of put-togetherness, even after what Tasha knew to be hours of work, that the impulse to mess him up surged strong in Tasha’s chest.

She slipped her hands in her pockets to quell the feeling, and was only marginally successful. “I brought something for you,” she told him.

His head cocked, smiled widening a fraction, shy but hopeful. “You did not have to do that.”

“I know.” She reached into her coat pocket, withdrawing a folded handkerchief. “But it made me think of you. It’s not even stolen, I promise.”

She handed it over, and Data took it, cradling it in his palm as if the cloth itself were fragile. Tasha watched as he unwrapped it, one careful fold at a time, his movements as always methodical and precise. What would it feel like to be cradled by those hands, played with and touched as if she were fragile, precious? It made her heart race even to speculate, as if she were some wilting flower and not a hardened orphan off the streets. “It isn’t much,” she managed hurriedly, doubt slipping into her chest as Data reached the center of the bundle. “It’s alright if you don’t like it, I can always take it back.”

Data’s eyes widened as he stared at the treasure. Tasha had been truthful; it was not stolen. Data was honest to a fault, and just the thought of soiling him with her touch was enough to make Tasha squirm with guilt. Lore, it wouldn’t have mattered. Tasha had seen him gamble and cheat, knew he was as light-fingered as she was and not quite as discerning. By all rights, he was the twin she should have wished for, the one who matched her in spirit. But Data…

His brightness drew Tasha like a moth to flame. She knew not what he saw in her, but he claimed it was a gentleness, hidden beneath the surface. He had touched her hair once, stroked a few stray wisps out of her face, and Tasha’s breath had caught at the faint brushing of his fingertips, the steadiness and wonder in his eyes, as if she had given him a gift, and not the other way around. He had that same wonder now, his voice caught with awe as he murmured, “It is beautiful.”

In the center of the handkerchief sat a ring. It looked silver, but Tasha knew it was mixed metal, much sturdier but worth much less. The band was set with a simple topaz stone, in a deep London blue that contrasted beautifully with Data’s pale coloring. She had seen it in a shop window, and had somehow been reminded of him. She had bought it on impulse, a frivolous purchase, but one that was entirely worth it for the way he looked at it now.

They had been doing this for a little over a year now. They had met by chance, bumping into each other literally when Tasha had tailed a carriage into town, recognizing the fine crafting as a sign that there would be something worth it for her to filch when the passengers got out. They had stopped here, and Data had been the one to take care of the horses. Tasha had stared when she’d seen him, her hands clutched behind her back, but he’d been so polite when he’d taken the purse back from her, returning it to its owner with a quiet “I believe you dropped this, ma’am” and not a word to turn her in. She’d found herself returning, again and again, to this stable, and the stable hand who worked it, and Data knew what kind of woman she was but he was always happy to see her. They had become friends, after a fashion. Friends, nothing more.

Tasha wanted more. She wanted his soft hands and his sweet words. She wanted to see him smile every day, and to know she had been the one to cause it. She wanted to kiss him, passionately, and learn if he would finally blush and squirm, or if unwrapping him would reveal a layer of possession like the one his brother wore on his sleeve, if he would take her, right there in the hay, pleasuring her until Tasha cried for all the neighborhood to hear.

But she had not come for a tryst, nor did she know if Data even wanted one. She had never asked, had never pushed that boundary, because to lose him would have devasted Tasha. There were precious few truly good things in her life, and he would be a loss she could not bear.

He slipped the ring on his finger, admiring it in the light. “It is beautiful,” he said again. “Thank you.”

“You really like it?”

“I would not lie to you.” His voice was soft, breathless, and he looked up at her. “I do not have anything for you. If I had known-“

“It’s alright,” Tasha said quickly. “I didn’t…I don’t expect anything back. It just made me think of you.”

“And when I wear it, I will think of you.” He curled his hand around the band, rubbing his thumb against the stone.

Tasha swallowed hard. She looked to the floor. “I should go.”

“Stay.”

She blinked up at him. “What?”

Data gestured towards the back, where hay bales were kept, where Tasha knew there was a loft where the brothers slept. “You could stay awhile,” Data told her, and he sounded so hopeful it almost broke her heart.

“It wouldn’t be proper,” she murmured, but even as she said the words, she knew that didn’t matter. Data’s silence confirmed it. Tasha wasn’t a proper lady. “I’ll stay a little while,” she said, and allowed herself to be led back, up the ladder to the loft, where Lore’s bed was a wreck but Data’s perfectly made. They sat together on the floor, and Tasha spent the night watching Data’s hands as they spoke, the way the ring flashed whenever he moved them.

She left with the sun just rising. She didn’t ask where Lore had spent the night. She doubted she wanted to know. Data walked her to the door, and when she turned to go he took her hand, his grip soft but so startling that Tasha froze. “Thank you again for the ring,” he told her, and, unexpectedly, bent to kiss her hand. Tasha stopped breathing, her throat suddenly tight as his eyes raised to her. He was asking, she realized, if this was okay.

“You’re welcome,” she breathed. And for just a moment, she didn’t feel like a girl off the street, covered in filth and dressed in tattered clothes, stained dark and in desperate need of more patches to mend them. She felt like a proper lady, in silks and ribbons, as her gentleman caller bid her farewell.

Just for a moment. But when it was over, she found that was alright too. Because Tasha wasn’t a lady, and Data was a gentleman only in spirit, not birth. But he was everything she had ever wanted, and for some reason, he seemed to be choosing her.

“I’ll come by again soon,” she murmured, tucking her hand to her chest when he released it, as if she could capture his touch and hold it there like a precious, nicked jewel. “I promise.”

“I look forward to it, Miss Tasha.”

On an impulse, she darted forward, laying a kiss to his cheek and blushing at her daring, scuttling backwards almost the moment her lips touched his skin. She startled when she felt fingertips at her chin, and then Data was lifting it, and she looked at him. His eyes were shining, that awe and hope and affection all wound up together, like Tasha had given him two different presents tonight. His thumb stroked against her cheek, and Tasha turned her head to it, kissing it softly before nuzzling her cheek into his hand.

A carriage clacked in the distance, rolling onto the street, and they broke apart, each taking a step away. Tasha tucked her arms around herself, wrapping her coat tight about her, and gave Data a shy smile. “Soon,” she said again. “I promise.”

“I will count the seconds.”

She believed him, and it made her smile as she made her way back down the side streets and alleyways from whence she came. She fancied she could feel his eyes watching her until she disappeared around a corner, that affection still warm in them as he watched her go. Tasha was who she was: a girl from the streets, a pickpocket and a thief, the sort of woman who ought to have found a man like Lore and settled for him. But she was the one who had been given a gift tonight. She’d been given a boy who was honest and good, who knew what kind of woman she was and who didn’t judge her harshly for it. Tasha didn’t know how the universe had come to hand her something so precious, but one thing was clear. Unlike the purse Data had liberated from her the day that they met, Tasha was never giving him back.


End file.
